For the Record: Artillery Map Guide by Tyraforce – Part 1: Swamp

Hello everyone, today, we are starting another guide series by Tyraforce, aimed at artillery. This series will help you play better on specific maps. First to go is the Swamp. Enjoy! - SS Author: Tyraforce Welcome to part one of the Artillery Map Guide, which is an expansion to the general Artillery Guide, which can now be found at the forums. The plan is to go through most WoT maps and show you some suggested initial locations, relocation possibilities, conditions and focus zones. We will focus on typical scenerios for high tier battles so if you already are an experienced arty player who relocates intuitively, this guide will be of little interest to you. As for the creation process, we are currently a team of 6 arty players pooling our experience in hope of making this guide as complete as possible. Should you be interested in helping us with the next parts, feel free to contact me. DISCLAIMER and BASIC INFO The drawings reflect typical tier 8+ random battles and are designed for SPGs with the usual shell arc (not the GC and FV304). Do not expect these maps to cover all the battle developments and consider not following this guide whenever the battle develops in an unusually way or whenever you come up with a better idea. • The circular areas represent possible arty locations where the green are safe and the red ones are not recommended for certain reasons. • The killzones are marked blue with the darkest being the most important. • Tomato zones are low priority areas frequently visited by bad players who are about to die anyway. • Camping areas are of low priority unless your team is pushing that particular area. • Important firing angles are marked with black lines • The guide will not provide screenshots of exact locations as that would get a lot of us countered. • If you want a certain map covered, please let us know in the comments or you can suggest it in game, kinda like this: SWAMP Swamp is one of the campiest maps out there. It generally punishes intuitive early pushes and involves a lot of camping medium tanks. Good players usually kill whatever crosses the bridges and then camp C and D lines. Both bases are well defendable each having 2 additional campy locations nearby. Artillery is vital at this map to break the said camps and thanks to very long games, SPGs should be on top of the damage list. Countering is rare but given the value of SPGs on this map, I’d actually recommend it in games with 2+ SPGs per team. The SPG heat map shows that about 50% of SPGs tend to sit in the 2 locations right behind the spawn and the other 50% go to the base area. When countering, focusing the smaller areas behind the spawn will be easier but the better players will probably be located in the base area, which is much bigger and harder to watch. Looking at the heat map above (it shows where tanks go, not where HEAT is spammed), the only 2 positions worthy of some blind shots are again the 2 areas behind the spawn, where a lot of people camp in the 2 bushes by the small rocks. The base camping areas offer too many spots to provide high chances of hitting the unspotted campers. SWAMP – south EARLY PHASE At the start of the game make it to your base even if you are in a very slow arty. Don’t stop and shoot as the area you’ll be crossing can get dangerous fast if enemies go middle. Do not make the mistake of being lazy and going to the position A. It may seem solid but if the enemy start pushing, it is the first area to fall and you cannot even defend it when sitting in it. The base position C is truly big and safe so there is no need for sitting in/near a bush or crater. If a tank makes it there the game’s probably over anyway. When looking for the exact spot, check that you can shoot at killzone 4. The base area can cover all the marked areas except 2,6 and A. Avoid positions E (limited shots) and B (spotting risk). As for early damage, the first spots are likely to be near the southern bridge, which are of low priority however. If your team pushes the northern bridge, you should definitely support it starting with shots at killzone 4, then 1. MAIN PHASE In most cases all who have crossed the bridges are dead and both teams camp the line D and G ridges. Consider moving east to the little ditch running along the southern part of the map. This will give you good shots at killzone 5 including its left part surprising those who consider it “arty-safe”. You can still cover killzone 3 balcony and more importantly counter pushes through killzone 2 and location A, which is the usual route of attack, which usually pauses in position A to exchange fire with the H4 corner campers. Countering this push should be your top priority. LATE PHASE Depending on the direction of the enemy push, consider relocating back to base for more protection or stay in the ditch from where you can cover lines 1 and 2. If your team is pushing, your priority should be killzone 6 followed by the two camping zones. To hit area 4 either move north to position E or all the way to K7/8 where you may get side/rear shots at tanks backing of around the D7 corner. The choice depends a lot on which position is safer at that moment. EXAMPLE 1 – BREAKING THE CAMP Here you can see a battle 5 minutes before it ended with a draw. Our team is pushing with E3s from the south and is fighting for the northern bridge. Our Conqueror GC is a green player, however, he decided to stay in base till the end dealing sub 2k damage in total. Moving to K8 between shots would have been perfectly safe and would have allowed him to take shots at the two areas marked in the picture thus winning the game for us. (I was in 268 and couldn’t do much about the situation.) EXAMPLE 2 – EARLY DAMAGE &#38; STOPPING THE ATTACK I will try to include replays when I can. I’m playing a lot more arty now to get some material as I had very few arty replays saved before I started these guides. These will not necessarily be some epic 10k damage games but will Continue reading →